How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis

By Robert R. Reilly

Quick Overview

The book you must read to understand the Islamist crisis—and the threat to us all

“Brilliant and groundbreaking.” —National Review Online

“A book that may offer the key to both understanding and perhaps defeating the ongoing war of terror against the West.” —American Spectator

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Details

Islam's Intellectual Suicide—and the Threat to Us All

People are shocked and frightened by the behavior coming out of the Islamic world—not only because it is violent, but also because it is seemingly inexplicable. While there are many answers to the question of "what went wrong" in the Muslim world, no one has decisively answered why it went wrong. Until now.

In this eye-opening new book, foreign policy expert Robert R. Reilly uncovers the root of our contemporary crisis: a pivotal struggle waged within the Muslim world nearly a millennium ago. In a heated battle over the role of reason, the side of irrationality won. The deformed theology that resulted, Reilly reveals, produced the spiritual pathology of Islamism, and a deeply dysfunctional culture.

Terrorism—from 9/11, to London, Madrid, and Mumbai, to the Christmas 2009 attempted airline bombing—is the most obvious manifestation of this crisis. But Reilly shows that the pathology extends much further. The Closing of the Muslim Mindsolves such puzzles as:

why peace is so elusive in the Middle East

why the Arab world stands near the bottom of every measure of human development

why scientific inquiry is nearly dead in the Islamic world

why Spain translates more books in a single year than the entire Arab world has in the past thousand years

why some people in Saudi Arabia still refuse to believe man has been to the moon

“The importance of this turn in Muslim thinking cannot be exaggerated.” —Asia Times

“Superb and essential . . . Fascinating.” —Jihad Watch

“The remarkable facet of The Closing of the Muslim Mind is that this work of theological archaeology is accomplished while leaving the audience an eminently readable book of just 200 pages. . . . This book should be compulsory reading at all institutions dedicated to preventing another 9/11.” —Hudson Institute

“An eye-opening and mind-opening book . . . No short review can do full justice to this book . . . Well-researched and meticulously documented.” —Oregon Live

“Superb and stimulating . . . Reilly’s small book has earned a place near the top of the tiny library of books I regard as indispensable. How did I live so many years without it?” —Joseph Sobran

“Clear and concise.” —MercatorNet

“Robert Reilly helps explain the Muslim worldview by thoroughly documenting the historic and doctrinal roots behind it; by refreshingly bypassing the overly dramatized question of ‘what went wrong,’ he explains the more pressing ‘why it went wrong.’” —Raymond Ibrahim

“I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to deeply understand the different ways of thinking within Islam and the phenomenon of radical Islam.” —Tawfik Hamid, chair for the Study of Islamic Radicalism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies

“Lucid and fascinating . . . Brilliant.” —Roger Scruton, author of The West and the Rest